Employee asked to wear ‘chicken head’ can collect workers’ comp

An employee who was told to wear a “chicken head” mask if she wanted health insurance can collect workers’ compensation insurance because she was traumatized by the event, the Department of Industrial Accidents has ruled.

Employee Karen Cappello said that her emotional distress began when she asked her boss at Cricket Productions, Victor Grillo Jr. for health insurance.

Grillo responded that insurance would be provided if Cappello agreed to wear a “chicken head” mask used as an office prank device, according to an administrative judge’s findings. “No head no payment,” Grillo e-mailed. The employee was also offered the option of e-mailing “all your friends that [Grillo] is god” or to come in “with bright red lipstick and kiss [a co-worker’s] bald head all over.”

Cappello became depressed and was unable to return to work for a year.

The DIA found that the administrative judge was correct in agreeing with the employee’s psychiatrist that the workplace harassment was the “predominant contributing cause” of her depressive disorder.